#This was supposed to be just a silly post with the dichotomy of their first scenes in cf

[softchouli]

#This was supposed to be just a silly post with the dichotomy of their first scenes in cf #but then I caught myself thinking about those nine months that Katniss spent in the woods #without worrying if she would be able to get something useful to bring home #and Peeta baking fresh goods from scratch #for him and for the ones he cares so much about #those activities are now products of self-indulgence #stale and scarce no longer have tangible space in their lives #and that's probably how both spent the next fifteen years they had at home #and so on and on and on #*crying bc of everlark* #the hunger games #everlark #katniss everdeen #peeta mellark #katniss and peeta #catching fire #mockingjay #thg

[scariercnidaria]

making my own post cause i dont particularly want to start a fight on the internet. but positing it as "voting blue" vs "complacency" vs "adventurism" is a supremely silly trichotomy. no these are not your only options. no there is no meaningful difference between voting blue and complacency. i agree that most people are just posting, but posting your ballot is pretty much exactly the same. all it does is switch out the shell of the bourgeois party from one that is evil and kind of embarrassing for the usa's image (because can we be real the only problem liberals had with trump was that he was impolite) to one that is the exact same evil (i hope we are past illusions that genocide joe biden and hospital bomber barrack obama were any better than trump) and only marginally less embarrassing. the democrats will let you down. it is not the fault of some establishment dems or a republican congress and the sooner you let go of these obfuscations and see that the entire system is broken the better. vote blue as far as a democrat president buys time for the working class party building while ultimately lets them reveal to the masses that they're no better than the republicans and that neither arm of the (in actual fact, single) us bourgeois-imperialist party has the domestic or global working class' best interests at heart, but don't hang your hopes on electoralism and don't create false dichotomies encouraging others to either do the same or commit acts of individual terrorism.

besides, what little reforms can be won by electoralism will not be won off the back of unconditional support for your political football team colours. if you want genocide joe and the democrats to stop funding genocide you can't vote for them despite that. the point of voting is supposed to be that promise of mass withdrawal can pressure a candidate into changing policy. i'm sorry but if nine tenths of people online are saying that they will vbnmw regardless then you are actively undercutting any attempts to organise such a protest, and you deserve to be "bullied" (at least superficially) or ratioed or whatever if just to signal to feds that -THIS IS NOT THE MAJORITY OPINION. OUR THREAT IS SIGNIFICANT. CHANGE YOUR POLICY-

of course, the limitations of this tactic are clear. social media is demographically skewed and predictions are not gauged from tumblr posts. but the vote is the barometer of the maturity of the working class, and a working class which is moving past the democratic party is a sign of a major shift. you take the actions and organisating of days past, that "i dont see you firebombing walmart, or organising a coup", and assume that it will continue under new conditions. but we are entering a new stage of the struggle. the topic of palestine is incredibly radicalising for many people as it brings so many of the contradictions of capitalism and imperialism and the dissonance between the bourgeois establishment's support for their colonial puppet in the middle east and the broad working class' support for palestine. organisational access to these newly conscious layers will prompt new tactics. but first we have to reach them.

which brings me to the final point. i do agree with one aspect of the post, and that is on posting. yeah: get offline. get involved with organising. there are revolutionary parties out there who are looking for young radicals but if you're all online then they can't find you and you're of no use because the revolution will not be liveblogged and it will not be shared via the instagram infographic industrial complex. the alternatives are not individual terrorism or voting republican, which i find the most offensive (light heartedly) part of the post. i dont care if its based, individual terrorism alienates the working class and is no basis for a national, let alone international, which socialism requires, movement. your direct action groups will get torn apart by the police and the working class will say all the better for it. and this is not because they are reactionary, or because they arent based enough, but because you have made an error in analysis of the material conditions and you reify spontaneity and you don't trust the working class to understand your demands and for that condescension they will never join you. it failed for the narodniks and it failed for ted kaczynski and it failed on january 6th and it failed on occupy wall street and it's failing for extinction rebellion. there are no shortcuts to party building. it is slow, tedious, careful work both to understand the tasks and to win over layers of the working class to build a mass movement. it requires above all a strongly educated core that can independently win people over and build a strongly connect national and international movement, and will not be lead astray. go get fucking organised

#join the imt or whatever

[sokkastyles]

Someone pointed out to me that the idea that Zuko needs to unlearn Fire Nation propaganda about Air Nomads being weak because they were peaceful makes no sense because in “The Headband” we learn that the Fire Nation propaganda about the Air Nomads portrayed them as more of a martial society, the teacher’s question was about Sozin defeating the Air Nomad army and Aang says they didn’t have an army. Which is what you’d expect of propaganda meant to justify a war. The idea that Sozin defeated the Air Nomads because they were weak fighters, or because they were a threat, instead of wiping out a peaceful nation, is an obvious way to justify genocide. Ozai says Aang’s people were weak and deserved to die but he doesn’t say they were weak because they were pacifists.

And I still maintain that when Zuko said what he said in “The Southern Raiders” about how “this isn’t Air Temple preschool, it’s the real world,” it was not really about Air Nomad beliefs. First of all, it was about Zuko defending Katara from Aang, who was being hugely condescending about her confronting her mother’s murderer. To shift the conversation to Aang defending his beliefs is missing the fact that Aang was the one who was telling Katara what he thought she should do. He wasn’t just speaking about his beliefs. And neither Katara nor Zuko contradicted Aang’s beliefs, but I’ve seen fandom accuse both of them of doing so.

Back to what Zuko says, though, I don’t think it’s the Air Temple part but the “preschool” part that is important. Zuko isn’t saying that Aang’s beliefs are wrong. He is saying that what Aang is saying is naive, and we can agree or disagree on that, but Aang was making a simplistic dichotomy between forgiveness and revenge and comparing Jet harming innocents to Katara getting justice for her mother’s murder. What he says does lack nuance and both Katara and Zuko are mad at him for it, and they have a right to be. Wanting justice against the guilty is NOT the same as harming innocents. 

And for Zuko, specificially, this conversation becomes personal in a certain way because Zuko is a victim of abuse. Zuko didn’t get to grow up in a temple, safe, and protected, and loved. Of course, the Air Nomads DID hurt Aang, unintentionally, but it wasn’t out of maliciousness. It makes sense that Zuko thinks Aang wouldn’t be able to understand why getting justice against this man is so important. Katara’s experience is different from both Aang’s and Zuko’s, but she and Zuko share the same trauma not only of losing their mothers, but of having grown up having to fear and experience constant violence. It’s not the same, since Katara was never hurt by people who were supposed to protect her - Zuko and Aang actually share that, although it’s still not the same because again, the Air Nomads didn’t mean to hurt Aang, and Katara and Aang share the similarity of their people being victimized by the Fire Nation. 

But that anger that comes from growing up afraid that Zuko and Katara share, that’s what Zuko thinks Aang won’t understand, and I think that’s what he means when he talks about “Air Temple preschool” and “guru goody-goody,” both terms that connotate the innocence of childhood, innocence that was taken away from both Katara and Zuko. Of course, this also hurts Aang because he should have been allowed to keep his childhood innocence, and it was something he had that was so brutally taken away, but the difference between those losses is that Aang had, at least for a while, a happy childhood. I think that makes Zuko feel hurt and angry, not necessarily at Aang, but what Aang is saying about how being angry and wanting justice makes you a bad person. Especially since we know that Zuko struggles with anger because of his trauma. But being angry doesn’t make you a bad person or mean you condone violence. And since Zuko would have been taught by the Fire Nation propaganda, incorrectly, that the Air Nomads were a military nation, it doesn’t make sense to interpret this as Zuko being against Air Nomad pacifism or beliefs specifically because he needs to unlearn Fire Nation propaganda, which would not have taught him that the Air Nomads were pacifists. And it’s especially silly to make that argument about post-redemption Zuko, who WAS shown unlearning propaganda about the other nations and specifically disagreeing with his father’s genocidal agenda.

#zuko #aang #katara #the southern raiders #atla meta #the headband

[kitkatpancakestack]

THANK YOU FOR SAYING THAT because the whole “you were born to save one life” thing reallyyy grated me the wrong way and then i came on tumblr and everyone was talking about how nice a moment it was and i was like? I cant be the only one who thinks that was a problematic thing to say to someone who thinks he is only worthy when he’s saving someone even before finding out he was a saviour baby???

In reference to this tangent

Listen, @parrishthieves I log on here and I make my crackhead analyses and post my silly little memes, but every often I snap, and the Buckley Parents are apparently one of those triggers for me.

I've seen two things pop up more than once that disturbed me since that scene:

1. People trying to condone the Buckley Parents' actions

2. People rightfully comparing both Buck and Eddie's shitty parents but then veering way off course and saying the Buckleys deserve forgiveness but the Diazs can eat shit (???)

Like first of all, they can all four of them eat shit, and second of all, we won't get into the implicit racism of it all rn bc it's Sunday and I'm tired, but those two things grind me the wrong way.

I'll just say this: I am not mad at the show for portraying that relationship the way they did, because that lack of closure sans the sunshine and rainbows ending is real life. Especially concerning our parents, we often don't get the kind of resolution we imagine and we have to go on our with our lives with that vacancy. That understanding is a part of growing up.

All that being said, I wish for people bending over backwards trying to give the Buckleys the benefit of the doubt to understand it's okay to hate their guts, and it's okay to think they are unredeemable. Kids don't choose to be born into this world, and regardless of whatever responsibility of moving on they're supposed shoulder for themselves once they reach adulthood, it isn't comparable to a statue of limitations on the part of the parents for whatever toxic crap they did. It doesn't just disappear. That shit morphs your ideologies and your personality in your formative years and like it or not, those mechanisms of behavior are not so easily undone, if able to be undone at all.

Most people have some degree of trauma from their guardians/parents, and that is a very long and complex sliding scale, and it is probably the most complicated and gray-area relationship we ever have. 9-1-1 portrayed this really well, I think: It's okay to hold love for your parents and also reject the way they treated you. They aren't mutually exclusive. You can forgive them for the inherent hardship that is adulthood without forgiving them for their transgressions against you. I just think it's important to understand such a dichotomy can exist, and it should feel messy and unclear, because it is.

#ask #another tangent on the Buckley Parents #another tangent on the complicated relationship we have with our parents and guardians

[nadziejastar]

Well, first of all I loved his outfit. It’s similar enough to what he wore in BBS to make it feel like Isa, but still felt fresh. It looked like something a fashionable young person would wear. It’s based on a Roen-Gackt collaboration design. Nomura sure loves Gackt, lol. So Isa was considered important enough to get a lot of care put into his new outfit. This collaboration was probably done a long time in advance, like with FFVersus XIII. I’m sure Isa’s backstory was supposed to be WAY more fleshed out so that his character would make a MUCH stronger impression on the player by the end of KH3. So, the outfit was kinda wasted in a way. Isa’s whole character was just wasted potential, though.

In a room made of white marble, a large mirror reflected Demyx as he prepared to leave for the mission. He took particular care with his hairstyle, painstakingly manipulating the brown strands with a comb to make them stand straight up. Saïx observed him from behind with what appeared to be distaste. In stark contrast to Demyx, Saïx left his long blue hair unstyled. The X-shaped scar on his forehead was all the style he needed.

Having an outfit based on a J-pop star might tell us something about how Nomura originally viewed Isa’s personality. He actually seemed like a rather fashionable young man who took pride in his appearance. He even wore stud earrings. His style was different from other kids like Hayner, Pence, or Lea. Saïx didn’t have any interest in his appearance. But Isa certainly seemed like the type to style his hair and then some. For some reason, I picture him ironically spending even MORE time in front of the mirror than Demyx. Especially post-KH3. Isa was already shy. I think he would probably struggle with insecurity over having a scar covering most of his face. So, he would try even harder to compensate with nice clothes and accessories.

The KH3 ending outfit really doesn’t fit someone like Saïx, who had such a harsh and dreary personality. I can’t see Saïx choosing to wear anything like that outfit. Way too youthful and trendy. And definitely not the star and moon accessory, either. He’d throw up at the cute little moon on Isa’s BBS outfit. Isa obviously was supposed to have such a different personality than Saïx. I bet Isa is going to be SUCH an awkward character going forward, because they’ll feel obligated to keep his Saïx personality traits, which will clash so badly with the rest of his character. He’ll be this pseudo-villain/quasi-good guy that just will feel so out of place in a series like this. It breaks my heart.

A great number of Nobodies have lost human form, as have the Heartless. Yet the Nobody born of someone with a strong heart retains its shape, with but the faintest visible changes.

As far as the rest of his design goes, I thought it was pretty lazy. In my opinion, Isa’s character design needed much more of an update than what he got. Kairi looked more different after her haircut than Isa did in the ending. If anyone deserved to look different for KH3, it was him. But…he still looked almost exactly like Saïx to me. He has a bit more color to his hair and face, and his scar is faded. But that’s about it. Which I guess was intentional. Why bother changing his look? It seems like they gave up on whatever plan they originally had for Isa to be his own character who was totally distinct from Saïx. They’re gonna just pretend that he wasn’t Norted and treat him like he was the same as Axel. Which sucks. 

Axel and Riku get along very well somehow. Since Riku has become a figure of Ansem, I don’t speak much with him, but he laughs like a different person when he eats Ice cream with Axel. Axel says he “Laughs to face bad feelings”, but it seems that Riku isn’t a bad person. At that Axel said ‘don’t laugh when you’ve got a gross face’, but Riku didn’t seem all that annoyed.

Also, Axel really liked sea-salt ice cream. You’ve eaten sea salt ice cream ever since you moved to that house. I wonder how you don’t break your stomach! It felt like he ate them to an unthinkable extent. Axel ate so much ice cream that the freezer in the computer room emptied every day.

Now as a villain, Saïx had a very cool design. He was handsome and had long hair, but...he looked mean and scary. He was supposed to. He WAS mean and scary. He was Xemnas’ right-hand man, after all. And if he was Norted, this makes sense. He was envisioned as a sociopathic guy who has bouts of uncontrollable bloodlust when exposed to moonlight. I like Saïx’s design. He was pale and almost vampire-looking? Or maybe Addam’s family. He was created as a bad guy. The whole idea was that he was a scary, unapproachable dude. He was sinister and creepy. Yet ironically his original self was the polar opposite. It made for a pretty cool twist, IMO.

“…Aw, is it good?” Axel teased. “Seriously, you’re like a little kid. Even though you look like a mean old man.” Riku made no response, keeping his gaze fixed on the computer screen. The comment did rub him the wrong way. But mentally, Axel was definitely older than him by at least a little. Not that you could tell from looking.

They were clearly going for a VERY different vibe with Isa. When I first played BBS, I thought that the visual difference between Isa and Saïx was extremely noticable. Isa looked a lot softer, sweeter and more friendly. The idea behind Saïx's design was: harsh and scary. The idea of a cute bunny rabbit representing his personality was supposed to be absurd. Saïx would be utterly disgusted if he was seen as “cute”. But the idea behind Isa's design was: cute and innocent. And Isa was indeed a little cutie. And he was innocent, too.

Saïx: We'll ensure he receives the maximum punishment.

Axel: Okay, since you worked really hard today, you get a reward. 

Saïx’s Casual Gear is called “Dessert Time,” but the localization named it “Just Desserts", and I thought that was very clever. To get one’s just desserts means to receive the appropriate punishment for one's actions. But sea-salt ice cream is supposed to be a treat to reward someone who did a good job.

Saïx gave him a cruel grin. “You will lose everything!” And then the Claymore pierced Axel’s chest.

Saïx rarely smiles because he is cold and cruel. But he would smile when he’s giving Axel his just desserts.

“But sweet!” Lea added, and Isa smiled a bit. That was rare for him. Well, eating ice cream together, talking about silly stuff, laughing together—it was just what friends did.

Isa rarely smiles because he’s shy. But he would smile when he’s eating ice cream with Lea because he has a sweet tooth and loves dessert. It was such a cool idea. I loved it.

dichotomy

1. a division or contrast between two things that are or are represented as being opposed or entirely different.

2. the phase of the moon in which half its disk appears illuminated

Saïx’s Pandora Gear is called “Dichotomy” in the localization. Saïx had weapons called Lunatic, Berserker and Werewolf. The weapon representing his real personality is a bunny rabbit. The HUGE difference between Isa and Saïx was the whole point. My impression was that BBS wanted to emphasize as much as possible that Isa and Saïx were two very different people. And character design was one way they chose to do that. That dichotomy is what made Isa so interesting to me. If you want to make Isa his own character, you should go with a different character design, in my opinion.

“You’re in a pretty good mood,” Axel remarked. Riku glanced up.

“Seeing Sora just made you that happy, huh?”

“I don’t feel like telling you.” A little smile crossed Riku’s lips as he took another bite.

“Y’know, it’s creepy when you smile with that guy’s face,” Axel said dryly, following suit and nibbling on his own ice cream.

Silence fell over the room. He paused in his munching to stare hard at Riku, then finally asked, “What is Sora to you?”

The question caught Riku off guard. He groped for words. On the sofa opposite him, Naminé spoke up instead. “Sora and Riku are best friends.”

Like Terra, Isa was supposed to be cursed. Being Norted is no joke. That’s what a lot of the Beauty and the Beast parallels were about. Axel started teasing Riku for his ugly ass face the same time they were trying to figure out the organization’s next move. They were going to target those with strong hearts, and the Beast was one of those targets. 

Belle nodded and silently walked out of the room. The trio went after her. The Beast was left alone with no company but the moonlight.

“You’re really just going to give up on everything now?” Sora said all at once. But the Beast only stared up at the moon.

Isa was supposed to be just as cursed as Riku was in KH2. And Riku changing his appearance fit perfectly with Lea and Isa’s story. Axel said Riku was creepy when he smiled with that face, and unfortunately that’s kind of how “Isa” made me feel in the KH3 ending. Since they took away the possession angle, I didn’t really see him as Isa. He still felt like Saïx to me. And seeing Saïx play and smile like that was kinda unsettling. And weird.

Axel’s eyes crinkled as he remembered his own best friend—the only friend he’d ever had, in fact.

“If your best friend goes away, you’re sad, and if you get to be with them, you’re happy,” Naminé added. “Isn’t that how it is, Axel?”

“…That’s about the size of it.” Axel nodded and sat down on the remaining empty sofa, staring at the sea-salt ice cream he held.

“So you are capable of sincerity,” said Riku.

Axel only shrugged at the jab and finished his ice cream pop.

Probably for this very reason, I could tell that Nomura wanted to take a different direction with Isa’s character design after he decided to make him a good guy and Lea’s best friend. You can see what Nomura had in mind for an adult Isa based on his illustrations of Saïx for 358/2 Days and KH2FM+. He looks different than he did in his vanilla KH2 concept art. His features lean a lot more heavily toward Isa in BBS. I really wished KH3 went in this direction with his updated character design. He looks much more youthful here, like Axel does. Also, I loved the fact that his scar was gigantic. It went all the way from the top of his forehead to the bottom of his nose. In KH3, they stuck with the old Saïx design, so his scar was a lot smaller. I like the bigger scar because it really shows that he was treated like a human lab rat (of course that idea was scrapped, anyways). 

Beside the Beast, who had once been a handsome prince, stood a man in a black cloak. “It’s time you dealt with the girl. She’s scheming to take everything you have,” said Xaldin, his hood pulled low to hide his face. “Your castle, your treasures…and then your very life.” The Beast hung his head. His castle was a desolate place, ruled by a monster.

“Trust no one. Feed your anger. Only rage will keep you strong!”

“I’ve had enough of strength. There’s only one thing I want…” The Beast gazed, unmoving, at the glass bell jar around a single red rose.

What he wanted was—

“Hah,” Xaldin spat. “To love and be loved in return? Who could ever love a beast?” The Beast whirled again, his cape rippling. He glared and let out a roar of fury.

“Good. Let your anger rise!” With that, Xaldin vanished.

Axel didn’t really see his best friend when he looked at Saïx. He felt like Isa went away and Saïx took his place. His relationship with Saïx was based on his memories of the past. He self-medicated with ice cream to cope. It was heartbreaking. After the scene where Axel was sad about his best friend going away, the chapter about the Beast’s Castle begins, describing him as a formerly handsome prince. So on that basis, I wish there was more visual differentiation between Isa and Saïx. Most of the fandom is just going to see Isa as the same mean old Saïx since there was no attempt to differentiate Isa’s personality from Saïx’s personality and they look exactly the same, too. 

“I don’t trust you,” Saïx replied flatly, the enormous Claymore in his hand.

“Traitors like you deserve to lose everything,” Saïx said.

Saïx gave him a cruel grin. “You will lose everything!”

They originally wanted Isa to have a distinct personality and appearance from Saïx—a lot more than just a new outfit. Isa was supposed to be a beautiful love interest cursed into being a beast. In the novel you can tell that Xigbar and Xaldin were pressuring Saïx to eliminate Axel. He was reluctant to do so on his own. Xigbar doubted whether he was even looking for Axel. Just like with the Beast, they were manipulating him to think Axel had been plotting to take everything from him. Deep down Saïx probably felt similar to the Beast. Like nobody could ever love him in his condition. I think that’s why he was so furious. Axel grew a heart, and then left him. But the only reason Axel grew a heart was because he remembered his feelings for Isa. It was a really cool idea. It's just a shame it never came to fruition.

#kh saix #kh isa #kingdom hearts #kh meta

[tanadrin]

(Warning: talking about things I have no expertise of, or indeed any kind of comprehensive knowledge)

I’m interested in the way our perceptions of magic differ from actual magic, and in general, how different the pseudo-historical “ISO Standard Fantasy Setting” differs from the thing it supposedly imitates. What it actually imitates is, of course, a certain genre of Romantic literature recycled through D&D (or through Tolkien then D&D again, or Tolkien, his imitators, and D&D), and closely related works. The conventional tropes of modern high fantasy were established in a relatively short period, even compared to hard SF, in the middle of the 20th century. They don't much resemble either their immediate predecessors (Dunsany, for instance) or their supposed source material (actual medieval literature) except in very very superficial ways--knights on horseback, for instance, things called faeries.

Sometimes there's back-contamination, where our erroneous impression of the past as conveyed by pseudo-historical settings in fantasy literature (Medieval Tymes, if you like) color our perception of *actual* historical periods. The video game Crusader Kings 2, for instance, feels much more like an ISO Standard Fantasy Setting that happens to be set in Europe than it does the actual Middle Ages (and this is before they added the admittedly silly Monks and Mystics expansion, which adds a whole new level of tongue-in-cheekness to a game that already played around a lot with its source material). There's very little use of medieval art or architecture in CK2, or even direct imitations of it; even less medieval music. THere's a lot of imitation, though, of what we *think* the middle ages should look like based on fantasy literature and its derivatives--which is why the Elder Scrolls and Song of Ice and Fire mods work so well with the base game's style, since in a way they're truer to the spirit of CK2 than actual history is. Both those works--Martin's especially--are firmly embedded in pseudomedievalism, and built on the ISO Standard Fantasy Setting in different ways.

But let's talk about magic in particular, which is a mainstay of the fantasy genre outside high fantasy, but which I feel, as a reader, tends to be treated in common ways across very diverse works of genre fiction. Here I'll include video games like the Elder Scrolls, traditional games like Dungeons and Dragons, novels of low fantasy (The Dresden Files, Harry Potter) and novels of high (Chronicles of Amber, China Mieville's Bas-Lag books, Discworld, Codex Alera). Every one, I contend, against our intuitions on the subject, while formally fantasy resembles science fiction in its treatment of magic; that is to say, magic is treated as an element of the world, and bears far more relationship to our modern conception of the natural order and of the natural world than any traditional form of magic. Magic is gone; magic has been killed stone dead. With very, very few exceptions, anything we think of as "magic" in film, books, TV, comics, etc., is really a form of not-magic, a kind of exotic naturalism, and at some point between the Renaissance and the industrial revolution, our cultural understanding of the world shifted so much that we (read "the people reading this post, not every human alive") became unable to conceive of magic as it was traditionally understood.

First off: in anthropological and philological terms, magic is a broad and vague label for a huge variety of practices from various cultures in various times and places, founded more or less in common quirks of human psychology, and without a single coherent definition. It's a collection, not a system; "systems" of magic are modern inventions, though there are definitely various kinds of magical traditions from different cultures. If you pick up a book like "The Book of Magic: From Antiquity to the Enlightenment" (Penguin, 2016; ed. and trans. Brian Copenhaver), you can look at a nice cross-section of different references to and discussions of magic from Biblical, Classical, Persian, Medieval, and Renaissance sources. Obviously, there's a lot going on that's different in each text, but a couple common themes emerge, I think.

First of all, you can classify most forms of these "magics" into discrete categories: divination through randomness or omens (entrails, crows, smoke, dreams, the stars); theurgy, or appeals to higher powers like angels (or accusations of appeals to powers like demons), which is big in medieval magic; speaking with the dead or with spirits (e.g., necromancy); and medicine. None of these are distinct, and none of these are distinctly magic, by which I mean many or most of these categories blend into one another and to other activities like cooking, worship, healing, or scholarship, and a strong "natural" versus "supernatural" dichotomy does not seem evident, especially in ancient sources like Plato, Pliny, and the Old Testament.

I think it's important to remember that a systematized explanation for how the world works was lacking for most of human history; you might see salt dissolve in water and precipitate out again, and fire burn things and acid eat them away, but knowing nothing about atoms or chemical reactions or the various electromagnetic and atomic forces which govern most human-level behavior of particles (to say nothing of the gravitational forces which dominate the heavens), it makes perfect sense to speak of the material universe being sustained and governed on an ongoing basis by the direct intervention of God, or spirits, or gods, who act according to consistent principles; in these circumstances, a denial of free will and a statement of absolute Divine control of the physical world isn't just a philosophical position, it's a productive explanation of minute details of life that otherwise lack compelling ones. Even if, as Plato and Pliny, you are more systematic about things and posit that sympathy operates between objects and can produce effects at a distance, much as one musical instrument can be caused to resonate by another, absent understanding of sound (and air molecules) or light or the particles and fields which mediate the electromagnetic or graviational forces, you still need to posit things like daimons and spirits as the actors which actually transmit such connections; and there is inevitably a tendency to personalize such things, even if you're not entirely anthropomorphizing them.

(Likewise, if you notice study of the heavens is capable of predicting things like eclipses and the tides, you may reason that it's capable of predicting other things, like whether you're going to win this war--after all, the moon seems to have an effect on the tides, why shouldn't it have an effect on human beings? Astrology isn't just primitive astronomy; it blends with astronomy in a perfectly seamless fashion.)

*How* magic works is not distinct from *what you do to make it work*. The two are the same; the former does not exist as a separate concept. A spell is performative, not in the sense that it's fake, but in the sense that saying "I take you to be my husband" actually marries you to the person standing next to you if the circumstances are valid.

So substances might have inherent properties; how those properties interact with one another and with the body is going to belong to the same category of knowledge as how the planets affect individual persons or spells affect your neighbor's cow, i.e., the fundamental mechanisms remain mysteries. Thus, medicine blends seamlessly with other kinds of magic, with ritual and with religion. Praying for your son to get better and putting a salve on his forehead aren't entirely distinct actions; thus, medical treatments from the middle ages contain a mix of what seems to us like perfectly sensible actions (mash up this plant and eat it) and insanity that nobody could possibly believe helps (then bury the rest in a cornfield and say verses from the Bible over it). And because other kinds of magic can help or harm, and medicine can help or harm, medicine is prone to being viewed as a kind of malicious magic: it's no coincidence that our word "pharmacy, pharmeceutical" comes from the same Greek word used to translate "witch," as in "thou shalt not suffer a witch to live": pharmakeos, i.e., a poisoner. In fact, all the vocabulary around magic-users is a pile of confusion, a conflation of different kinds of action that don't fit neatly with modern notions of A Wizard. "Witch" is from a word originally meaning "diviner;" in the Middle Ages and early Modern period it seemed to be understood as one who invokes the power of supernatural beings to do evil things--note that the crime of witchcraft was because witches necessarily consorted with the *devil*, not because they used magic per se (presumably, power from God or the angels was OK--and indeed, grimoires like the Lesser Key of Solomon talk about magic from these sources, and emphasize the necessity of moral purity in order to get the spells to work). "Maleficium," in Latin, originally just meant "evildoer," however that evil was done; likewise, mekashefah, the word (originally feminine) which "witch" translates in the above Bible verse. The "witch" of Endor is not at all a crone; she's an apparently respectable woman capable of furnishing Saul and his men with a decent meal, and the term the Bible actually uses is "sho'el 'ov" - i.e., one who knows how to ask ghosts questions.

(With the exception of necromancy, little distinction is in fact made in the Old Testament between kinds of supernatural power; e.g., in Exodus the magic of the Egyptians is depicted as illegitemate, but no less efficacious for that. Magic plainly works, even if it's wrong.)

Charms, spells, and incantations are more often than not about invoking a specific power: gods, in Greek and Roman magic, God and his angels in Christian. (Pliny divides magic into medicine, astrology, and religion; the first two, he says, produce predictions which corroborate divination--as stated above, astrology is not entirely distinct from divination for obvious reasons.) Later, alchemy begins to produce actual theories of matter; but it's still not at all distinct from the kind of magic that involves invoking higher powers.

So what *isn't* magic? That's considerably easier to answer than what is: when you look at the kinds of things that look like magic to us moderns, it becomes easy to recognize the ways in which scientism has so preoccupied our way of viewing the world that it becomes inextricable even from our supposedly "magical" fantasy.

Magic isn't sufficiently advanced technology, for one, or a highly refined and subtle art (Tolkien; he knew this, obviously, and wasn't going for magic-qua-magic). Magic isn't *energy*, or a *force* or a *field*; these things are the language of *science,* of electromagnetics and gravity and atoms (contra Jim Butcher, Terry Pratchett, and every video game ever). It's not local variations in the natural law (as a distinction between natural law, human law, and especially moral law actually *isn't* that clear cut). It's not telekinesis or ESP, however those are caused! Remember, these are pseudo-*science*, they were invented in the scientific era. If you're an ancient using magic to make objects move, you're not "moving it with your mind." You might be invoking spirits to move it for you, but *you* are not doing it with some invisible arm. Magic isn't beams of light or deadly green lasers. It's also not some kind of metaphysical illusion. Sure, magicians have been denounced as tricksters and illusionists all throughout history, but if there's deception in magic, it is good old-fashioned sleight of hand--maybe your court magician replaced his staff with a snake when nobody was looking. It's not a ghost-snake you can put your hand through, though.

A fantasy story using traditional notions of magic would involve attitudes pretty alien and unsatisfying to a lot of modern fantasy readers: a close connection between the physical and moral world, little attention to *how* things worked, and more attention to what you *did* to make things work, nothing like a systematized, sciencified magic, and a blend so close between magic, religion, and nature that they are entirely indistinguishable.

None of this is to say that the traditional F&SF conception of magic is wrong or bad somehow; it fits our modern sensibilities quite nicely and makes for compelling stories. But don't make the mistake of confusing these functionally-distant reinterpretations of history for how people actually used to understand the world.

[elle-stevens]

The Break Up Blog - Day Two Hundred And Nine

I swear to God, the days are getting hotter in Cape Town. 

February’s supposed to be the hottest month of summer here. And yet, the first week of March is almost over and I’m browner than a bar of chocolate. 

Still, I’m not complaining. 

It’s awesome being home again. 

Since I last wrote a breakup blog, a lot has happened. Firstly, C messaged me to let me know that the two teachers who were meant to replace me and her at our old school quit randomly because of this coronavirus business. She and AS let N know that I might want my old job back. So N messaged me and made an official offer from the school, which I accepted. So once my work visa comes through, I’ll probably go back to my old school in China. 

I know what you’re thinking. I made such a big stink about leaving that school for all sorts of reasons, particularly the one where I felt like my teaching skills had no meaning whatsoever. 

What can I say? I’ve had a lot of time to think about things and it would honestly be easier to stay at a school I know and save up some money for another year before I move back to South Africa permanently. That’s if this global coronavirus epidemic ever gets resolved. It’s left me in a precarious position, at least professionally and financially. 

Now it’s a waiting game. South Africa is doing what it always does and slowing down the process for me getting another visa. N keeps texting me and urging me to ‘speed things up’ with the visa process. But really, what does she expect me to do? Bribe someone? Use blackmail mayhaps? I’m literally doing everything humanly possible on my end to get a new job and no one else seems to be playing ball. All I seem to get is added pressure which I can’t assuage in any sense. I’ve told N that if the school needs to find someone asap, then they should go ahead and do that. So we’ll see how everything turns out. 

The sad part is that I’m not sure I really care anymore. Obviously, it will be great to have any job, even my old one, at this point. But I’m just tired of holding up my end of the bargain and not getting the same treatment back. 

Secondly, I may or may not have confirmed that X is dating again. And all because I simply had to Facebook stalk her for old times’ sake. 

This happened on Wednesday last week before my appointment at a local police station to apply for a background check for my visa. 

I scrolled through X’s most recent posts and found one from close to Valentines last month. There seemed to be a lot of pics and videos with her and this new girl I don’t recognise. Most of the pics of the two of them seem platonic. But then there’s another picture of them at what looks like a really romantic holiday resort in X’s hometown. 

The real kicker is that X called this girl ‘bae’ in one of her posts. 

And. That. Fucked. Me. Up. Hard. 

I tried to play it off, I swear I meant to. 

But I just couldn’t do it. 

Something in me snapped. And suddenly, it was like we were breaking up all over again. 

Just when I thought there was no way X could possibly hurt me any more than she already has. 

I guess I was wrong on that front. 

What pisses me off the most is that she gets to move on first. 

She’s the one who lied to me repeatedly and used me for money. But she gets to date again and move on like she deserves to be happy in the first fucking place. 

That just really gets my goat. 

X basically had a year to stop being in love with me, long before I knew that she’d already moved on from our relationship. It’s only been 7 months for me and it still feels raw and painful on any given day. And now X is just over me and our relationship, like we never happened. 

Like I meant nothing to her. 

Honestly, it just fucking sucks. 

So yeah, I spent most of Wednesday morning pissed off about that and then emotional and weepy for most of that afternoon because it was Candice’s 20th death anniversary as well. So I bought flowers and visited Candice for a while in the cemetery, just lapping up all the lovely misery of the day. 

I went to a low place thinking about it all. 

I’m beginning to think that I’m destined to love bad women. 

There’s my mom who I love despite the fact that she’s basically a cartoon in human form with no real feelings about anything or for anyone. Then there’s Candice who was my best friend in my formative years who also bullied me and made my life incredibly miserable for half of 6th grade. 

And then of course, there’s X too and everything I’ve blogged about her in the past six months. 

So yeah, that was extremely fun to think about in the last couple of days. 

I’m also beginning to wonder if I’m just a broken toy now. You can wind me up and I’ll still play a silly song and move my limbs around a bit. But there’s no spark or life in my eyes and my smile is hard and plastic.

Don’t get me wrong, I am really happy and at ease these days. That isn’t the problem. 

My problem lies in how little fucks I give about anything that seems to be happening to me right now. In the past, if something good or bad happened, I had some kind of strong reaction to it.

But now...I’m brushing everything aside with a sardonic ‘meh, what can you do?’ There doesn’t seem to be any point in putting up a fight anymore. 

I think X broke something vital inside of me; that part of my heart that wants to give a fuck about something, anything really. And whenever I think about opening up my heart to someone, I instantly retreat into my silly jokes and ridiculous whims. 

I guess my therapist was right after all. What X did to me was an emotional trauma and I’m still gradually recovering. 

Maybe I just need more time? 

I’m becoming very snarky about my celebrity crush on Ariana Grande of late too. I’m taking potshots at her music and making unkind jokes about her stage persona. I think this is me trying to distance myself from my feelings because my crush is starting to fade. 

I’m trying to keep the fantasy alive though. Listening to her songs on Spotify still give me a great sense of solace. And when I lay my head down to sleep every night, I still see her behind my closed eyelids, as herself or as Cat Valentine. 

But the picture’s beginning to dim and I’m forcing myself to keep her imprinted on my mind. Because if she’s not there, if no one’s there in my heart, what else is there left for me to do? 

I’m scared that if I let her go, I won’t be able to write again. I know that’s dumb, but Ari really did bring my writing back to life somehow after a whole year of inactivity. 

I’m still not done with my latest Cabbie drabble. Time travel is hard to write about, especially when I want to be deep and clever about it. At least I’m getting better with nailing Cat’s facetious narrative in my stories. 

That girl is as thick as cement. But she sure is pretty...

Maybe I just need to go with the flow and feel whatever I feel, no matter how silly or embarrassing it is.    

I don’t know how much longer I’ll be in Cape Town for. This coronavirus business is getting really scary now that there are two confirmed cases in South Africa.

China and Italy really made love to the pooch big time...

My old school isn’t even open yet and they already want me to come back to China asap. I just wish I knew for certain if I’ll be going back in a month or if there’s going to be a hold-up with my paperwork. 

I’m honestly over it all. 

As for X, more power to her and ‘bae’ I guess. Although it would be in her new girlfriend’s best interests to watch over her cash more closely while X is around. 

You really can’t trust anyone anymore when it comes to money. 

Alright, bitter ex-girlfriend diatribe is over now. I’ll type a few sentences into my Cabbie drabble which will probably make Cat look like even more of a sexy dumbass. And then I should try to get some sleep. 

It’s a strange dichotomy for me: being stressed out about the future and relaxed during my time off. 

I just hope it all comes together in the end. 

My life these days is a beautiful kind of strange. 

#breakupblog #daytwohundredandnine

[davidcarterr]

Auteurs: Colin Read

This is the first in our Auteurs series by Ben Powell, read his introduction to the series.

As a film-maker, Colin has done everything: from working on some of the earliest attempts to present skateboarding in a ‘reality show’ format, (via Slap’s ‘One in Million’ series); to creating skate-related content for Viceland; going on to produce music videos for the likes of Radiohead and direct shorts for the likes of State Footwear, Converse and DC; through to creating his own independent body of work under the ‘Mandible Claw’ moniker which encompasses the hugely successful full-lengths ‘Tengu – God of Mischief’ and ‘Spirit Quest’.

I caught up with Colin recently to discuss his recent involvement in shooting skits for the Girl Skateboards ‘Doll’ video, only to find our conversation rapidly drifting off in various directions to cover everything from Italian horror cinema, right through to the relevance of 19th century philosophy’s predictions of the inevitability of Art’s diminishing power to the status of skateboarding in 2019.

I would highly recommend taking your browser over to Colin Read’s Vimeo to see more of his work after you’ve read through this. Thanks for your time Colin.

I’ve been a fan of your work for a long time, but the impetus to reach out here was your collaboration with Girl on their recent Doll video. How did that come about? Were you already connected with Crailtap, or did they reach out to you?

Girl hosted a short film contest, for shorts related to skating, judged by Spike Jonze. I wasn’t going to enter, but a friend basically demanded that I did, so I sent in ‘Solos’, which I’d made a bit prior. It was directly inspired by Spike’s Pharcyde video, so I figured it would be cool if Spike got to see it.

I assumed that they’d disqualify me; I wasn’t exactly the target demographic to take part of the contest. When they called me and told me that I won, I asked if they were sure, since I hadn’t made my video specifically for their contest. I said I’d be happy to take backseat and let the grand prize go to a younger kid, or someone who worked hard to make a video just for this. But they insisted. Part of the prize was a trip out to LA, which I had actually never been before, so I was glad to go.

Anyway, I suspect that they gave me the win in order to lure me in to make some stuff for their video, because that’s exactly what happened. They asked me if, since I was coming, I might want to make some skits for the video.

Historically, Girl/Choc have embraced the idea of adding a sense of narrative to their video output, something which I’d say is also central to your own oeuvre, was that part of the attraction of getting to work on these two skits for Doll?

Definitely. I grew up on Girl videos, and always loved the charm of them, which was born out of the narrative pieces in them. Tiny Keenan, Paco, the magic board. I was honoured to try to continue the tradition.

We’ll return to the notion of narrative shortly, but focusing on these two skits in Doll first – how much direction were you given (if any?) in terms of what they were to focus on?

They had a few ideas of people they’d like to focus the skits on. Mainly, they wanted to try to include some people that otherwise weren’t very present in the video—that’s how we ended up making a skit for Mike Mo.

I originally had planned a skit for a different lesser-featured rider, but the day I got out there—the day before we were supposed to shoot—they realized that he’d be unavailable. So we had to think fast. We sat down and watched the video in its semi-finished state, and we noted some places and people that would be good points for skits. They said that since Griffin didn’t have an intro, maybe I could make something for him. I’d never met him, but someone mentioned that he was freakishly good at fingerboarding, so that’s where that skit came from.

Photo by Rye Beres

Was there much in the way of ‘anxiety of influence’ for you here? I mean – Girl’s track record of skits is pretty untouchable and you’re treading in the footsteps of the likes of Spike, Ty, Wing Ko and Meza by picking up the gauntlet on this one surely?

Luckily, the timeline was so short that I didn’t have any time to worry this. If I had had more time for pre production, I’m sure anxiety would have crept in.

You said on your site that you shot them both in one day in LA, so I’m assuming that you had a pretty formed idea of exactly what you wanted to shoot and how, given the time-constraints. Do you storyboard shoots beforehand, or just wing it once you know what you want to do?

I have a little notebook in which I scribble rough storyboards. I usually write down a simple shot list, and rough out any boards if I need to solidify an idea or image.

The ‘skateboard as an animate being with its own voice’ concept is kind of a repeated trope of Girl skits, (‘Magic Board’ from Yeah Right, ‘Double Yellow’ from Goldfish, ‘Chaplin’ from Mouse, etc) but I think this is the first time that ‘revenge’ has featured within that idea. Where did the inspiration for this one come from, and did involving Mike Mo add to the narrative aspect, what with him recovering from injury personally?

Yeah, I wanted to try to continue the legacy of the magic board. I liked the idea of trying to imbue an inanimate object with real malice. I thought the dichotomy would be funny.

I’ve been friends with Mike Mo for a few years; we bonded over stories of nerve damage and stem cell research. (I have serious back injuries that make it hard for me to skate.) So I was really happy to see him skating a bit again. I wanted to shoot that short with him as a way to help include him in the video. I think that, as you said, his history adds to the story.

Are you a fan of Dario Argento by any chance? Some of the lighting/sound design in the Mike Mo skit, and the dolly shot of the board stalking him in his house reminded me of the oppressive atmosphere of the Italian giallo film genre. I might be reading too much into it here though…

I am! And that’s also why I think the skit is funny, it’s putting those horror tropes against a pretty stupid idea.

There’s an alternative ending on the Mike Mo skit you posted on your site, one that kind of dilutes the menace of the one featured in Doll. What influenced the choice to go with the darker one used in the video?

The one I put on my site asks the idea, “What’s the worst a skateboard can really do to you?” And it’s a shinner. That’s all it can do.

I was still pushing for that one to be in the video, but I think they wanted to keep it “scary” and let the impact act as a “wake up” from a bad dream into the McCrank section.

With the Finger board skit, there seems to be a very conscious nod towards the infamous miniature Keenan skit with the 360 flip over the battery, (along with maybe a subtle Strobeck reference too) – was it important to you to try to retain a sense of continuity with the skits you were making as regards earlier stuff that Girl had used in their videos?

Yeah, you definitely caught both of the references there, (laughing). Yes, both with the Keenan nod, and the magic board, I wanted to let things feel familiar to Girl.

Those close-ups, which are ever-present in skate videos now, thanks to Strobeck, just feel so self-important and overdramatic. So I thought it’d be funny to smash it together with fingerboarding to show how silly it is.

Fantastic way to introduce one of the heaviest parts in Doll too – did Griffin film any of those tricks specifically for the skit, (aside from the slam obviously) or did you work around pre-existing clips?

Those were all throwaway clips that he’d already filmed. I only thought of the skit the day before we filmed it, so there wasn’t any time to film new stuff.

What camera gear were you using to shoot both of these on? What about lighting?

Super low budget: a GH5, a gimbal, some handheld LEDs.

From your perspective of the person usually doing everything alone when it comes to skateboard film making – how was the experience of only being one part of a larger whole like this, where the onus is only on you to produce what you’ve been tasked with?

It was great. I didn’t have to sit at the bottom of steps for hours, or chase a skater back and forth for days trying to film lines. I just got to do my fun little thing then leave, and wait for the finished product.

How did the experience of watching Doll at the premiere compare to a premiere experience for one of your own videos?

I actually didn’t get to go to any premieres, I was out of town for the NYC one sadly.

To return to something I touched on earlier – you’ve been around the world of skateboard film-making for a long time Colin – dealing with everything from the earliest (albeit abortive) attempt to create a skateboarding reality show long before the likes of KOTR with Slap’s ‘One in a million’, to making regular web edits in the early days of online ‘content’ for Slap and the Ride Channel, through to producing full-length independent videos of your own and collaborating with other brands. Given that wealth of experience – what’s your perspective on the current state of the art form, (if we can still call it that) of the skate video?

I think it’s equalized a little bit. A few years ago, full-length videos really seemed to be dwindling, and the focus had shifted to hyped-up standalone web parts. Those are still prevalent, but companies seem to be caring about making longer, more thought-out videos again. There’s room for a lot of cool stuff.

Despite the deluge of the necessarily forgettable ‘individual part’ – the last 12 months or so have been a strong era for the full-length I think with the likes of Sour’s ‘Instagram killed the video star’, Palace’s ‘Palasonic’, Girl’s ‘Doll’, GX1000 ‘Roll Up’ and most recently ‘Blessed’ all adding to the legacy of the full-length, whilst also deviating from the conservative norm of the ‘trick, trick, line, banger, song’ formula. Which productions have stood out to you recently and for what reasons?

I’d actually point to some web edits: Jacob Harris’s edits are some of the best work in skating right now. His Atlantic Drift series is amazing.

As I was saying before, there’s room for new ideas. A video doesn’t have to be either a single part, or a full 30-minute video. There are plenty of in-betweens that you can carve out, which is what Jacob is doing.

I mentioned the incorporation of narrative into skate videos earlier because your own productions seem to always have something cohesive along those lines, whether it be context-specific like the roof skating section in Tengu, or thematic as with the Aquatic Journey section of Spirit Quest, or even in a more over-arching way such as with the spirit animal concept of your last full length vid. How does this approach relate to the way you see the meaning behind the act of skateboarding itself, and the ways in which you personally represent it?

I think that skateboarding is actually pretty meaningless, inherently. It’s a toy. But you can make it mean anything you want. For me, it has meant a creative outlet, a physical outlet, and a way to get out my mental frustrations. And it has been the means by which I’ve made my most lasting friendships.

So, narrative is just what I find interesting, and my way of making a skate video be a little bit more than that. But many of my favourite videos are just skating, and not much beyond it. I don’t necessarily think that a literal narrative has to be present in a skate video.

But what I do find necessary is some sort of visual language. You have to put a skate part together so that it makes sense. If that makes sense, ha. The tricks have to be placed in an order that seems logical, and inevitable. Same with the order of parts. Each should be a reaction to the last, and inform the next, and so on. I guess it is a way of telling a story, not with words, but with tricks, and ideas.

There’s a famous Walter Benjamin essay called The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction where Benjamin argues that the inherent power of art has been irrevocably diminished due to the technological ability of the modern world to replicate original pieces of art, thus removing them from their unique existence as an original thing in and of itself. Although written nearly a 100 years ago now, Benjamin’s commentary about the loss of ‘aura’ or magical power of art works in a world where everything can be infinitely copied and reproduced seems to me to be relevant to the contemporary situation with skateboarding. The omnipresence of the Internet has consigned everything to the category of ‘content’ to a certain extent, whether it be a photograph, a full-length video, or a single trick. Superficially everything is afforded the same value because the context that earlier generations took for granted, that was ministered to by a benign dictatorship of magazine editors and brands, has almost completely dematerialized now, with the Internet and its chaotic (supposed) democracy as its replacement. What are your thoughts on this idea?

I agree. When I was a kid, videos were special. Really. You’d hear about them before they came out, or from some other kid who’d bought it first, and then once you got your hands on it, you and your friends would get together and watch it religiously. And it might be a few months before you’d get another one. You’d wear out the VHS tape from rewinding it.

The magic of that is gone now. But there’s a new type of magic, which comes with there being an endless ocean of skateboarding to watch. I’m not sure which world is better. If you want to re-watch a single video a hundred times, you still can. You’re just not forced to.

With my own videos, I try to add enough “special” elements to warrant repeated viewings. So I’m happy that people are still watching.

I suppose I could have explained the above much more simply by just asking if you were pissed off at ‘going viral’ on Reddit because somebody ripped a trick from Spirit Quest and posted it without attributing where it came from to garner Reddit upvotes… That clip went nuts right? I’m having trouble finding it now but didn’t you intercede in that whole phenomenon personally as well?

Someone filmed it off their TV screen, posted it to Vine with no caption, and it exploded. It’s been reposted thousands and thousands of times across all platforms. I’m really happy that lots of people have seen it, but it does annoy me that many (most) of these are still reposts of the original low-quality TV filming, or even lower-quality rips from the DVD. I wish that people would at least see it in context; that whole section with Connor (Kammerer) is full of those perspective-shifting match cuts.

The reason I asked that rambling pseudo-question above is because your own output seems to me to strive to add that missing component back into skate videos. I’m not even sure how to describe it; ‘spiritual’ is probably wrong, but you seem to have been able to infuse your videos with a sense of magic and wonderment to complement the trick performance side of them. That recent Magenta/DC piece is a great example of what I’m struggling to illustrate: despite being nominally a vehicle to sell products, it still has that sense of wonder to it that I remember feeling watching say Life’s ‘Soldier’s Story’ or early Powell videos. Am I barking up a non-existent tree here?

As I said, I consciously try to inject a little bit of wonder into my videos. I think that people have already made plenty of really great skate videos, so I don’t see the point in just making another “skate video.” People have those pretty much figured out. For me, if I didn’t do a little bit more, I wouldn’t have thought it worth making.

You said in your Jenkem interview prior to the release of Spirit Quest that you had retired from making full-length videos but you’re still very much involved in the craft of creating documentation of skateboarding – what influences your decision to take on a project for Vice or for a brand like Magenta these days?

I love skating more than anything, so I like to stay involved in some respect. I just can’t really spend a long time filming tricks anymore. So when people approach me to make things that I’m capable of doing, I’m happy to try.

What’s your physical situation now? Did your back surgery solve the herniated disc issue that you had? A friend of mine had the same thing and spent 9 months unable to move, only for it to be eventually remedied by a fairly simple (albeit risky) operation to trim the disc. VX fish eye is still off the agenda I assume?

My back is still terrible. Past procedures have not helped. So still no fisheye for me.

You’ve done a fair bit of film work outside the charmed circle of skateboarding too – music videos for Radiohead and Brother Dege etc – strikes me that you’re perfectly placed to take your skill set into that world because your use of music in skate productions is central and integral to the end product, rather than being a case of simply cutting up tricks and adding a track at the end. Is there much cross over in terms of your approach to filming and editing for music projects?

The difference is all in pre-production. With skating, I’d have a more overarching plan, and then had all the time in the world to improvise, rethink, retrace my steps, retry ideas. With music videos and commercials, I don’t have that luxury. You generally only have 1-2 days to shoot, so you have to have everything planned to a T in advance. There’s very little wiggle room for spontaneity.

It’s an open secret that unless you work directly for a big sports brand that there is no money in filming skateboarding, at least not as a ‘career’ for a grown adult. How does the world of music video making compare to kneeling in urine waiting for somebody to land a kickflip?

It’s pretty comparable, honestly. You don’t do music videos for the money. You do it to have a chance to make fun concepts and work with cool people.

What else do you have scheduled film making wise? Any plans to turn your hand to creative writing or has the visual medium taken over from that entirely now?

I’m actually entering the early stages of pre-production for a narrative film. Wish me luck!

Ok Colin, I’ve taken up way too much of your time already so, if you’ll allow me, can we finish this off on a little quick fire piece please?

Favourite pairing of music and skater?

Danny Renaud in Mosaic, or Nate Jones in Real to Reel

Most influential skateboarder for you personally?

My friend Alex Fogt, whom I started skating with, and still skate with today.

What about filmer/editors? Who inspired you early on and who inspires you now?

Off the top of my head: French Fred, FESN, Tightbooth, Dan Wolfe, Joe Perrin. Jacob Harris.

Who would be the one skater that you have had the most fun filming with over the years?

That’s impossible to answer… Connor Kammerer and Alex Fogt have been some of my most frequent and long-running collaborators and friends, and are always fun out in the streets.

How many VX1000’s have you owned cumulatively?

Oh, man. Close to 20, probably.

Anything else that you’d like to say to Slam City Skates readership?

Take care of your back! Do yoga and keep that core strong!

Interview by Ben Powell

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Auteurs: Colin Read published first on https://medium.com/@LaderaSkateboar

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Action Comedies in Anime and what we can Learn from Them

A dire warning to sushi lovers everywhere!

Perhaps influenced by Anthony’s recent article and the ensuing discussion, I decided to watch anime for the first time in a few years, settling on the series One Punch Man.  It follows the exploits of heroic, dull-witted Saitama, who decides to become a costumed hero after failing a job interview and encountering a half human, half crab mutant in his underwear attacking people nearby.  Unfortunately, after three years of training, he has reached a point where he kills every opponent with a single punch, leading to a boring existence where no villain, no matter how terrifying or deadly, presents any challenge to him.  The series is very good, both action-packed and funny, and made me think about anime action comedies in general.

The genre (and this applies to Japanese live action movies, too) presents an interesting dichotomy right off the bat.  On the one hand, the Japanese are fantastic at action.  The choreography of the fights, the ebb and flow of the action, the way they build up villains as all-powerful, horrifying menaces, and protagonists as the ultimate, tough, stoic heroes is masterful and worth studying.

On the flipside, they are terrible at comedy.  With a small handful of exceptions, comedy anime lacks jokes, have poor “beats”, and are full of hokey, canned humor.  I don’t think this can simply be attributed to a difference in tastes between East and West, either.  Not only is one of the exceptions, Detroit Metal City, one of the funniest creative works I’ve ever seen and read, but this doesn’t apply to, say, Hong Kong movies, which are often uproariously funny.

Regardless, this combination of a strength and weakness is important to keep in mind.

Kenshiro was modeled after Bruce Lee, Mad Max, and Ogami Itto.

Before looking at the pure action comedies, let’s examine a few action series that benefit considerably from humor.  First up is the shounen classic Hokuto No Ken, or Fist of the North Star.  A favorite of little boys and girls alike in 1980’s Japan, it’s not a series one would imagine to be rife with laughs.  Taking place in a post-apocalyptic society heavily inspired by Mad Max, giant, evil punks brutally torture and murder innocent people simply trying to survive the hellish nuclear wasteland.  And yet, when the hero Kenshiro arrives to dispense justice on the evil-doers, the resulting comeuppance is often nothing short of hilarious.

Check out this scene.  Or this one.

While the major fights between Kenshiro and the other powerful martial artists in the series are kept serious, his disposal of sadistic flunkies, always ending with a deadpan omae wa mou shindeiru (“you are already dead”), is an important element in the show’s success.

If everything was kept serious, the series would quickly become monotonous and a tad depressing, with so many episodes featuring cruel punks victimizing helpless villagers.  However, thanks to the more humorous approach, one is constantly looking forward to the punishment Kenshiro will dole out to the villains, which is as gratifying as it is funny.  And it stays fresh and interesting, since they always change it up.

Lastly, while I love a good dub, Hokuto no Ken has to be watched with subs, to the point where it’s a far worse, even different show in the English translation.  The anime is a phenomenal voice-acting achievement, with Akira Kamiya perfectly encapsulating Kenshiro’s stoicism and coolness through the smallest tonal inflection, and the late, great Kenji Utsumi conveying the overwhelming power and ruthlessness of the main villain Raoh.  Credit the voice acting with much of the aforementioned humor, or how memorable the character’s toughness and emotions are.  In fact, I struggle to think of an anime where the voice acting had this much significance.  (Most times, it’s a non-factor for me in rating a series) Needless to say, the English translation is not up to the task, being poor even by regular anime standards, and making Kenshiro sound like a nebbish, dweebish schoolteacher.

Another good example of comedy being used in an action series is in Grappler Baki.  Here, the humor comes from a different source.  Namely, how ridiculously over-the-top everything is.  While it occurs in the manga, one scene perfectly crystallizes this.  The monstrous American convict Spec has escaped from a maximum security prison, killed countless guards, and made his way to Japan.  At one point, he comes across several generic Japanese delinquents, one of whom is holding a gun.  What does he do in this situation?  One might think he would beat them up or kill them, despite the firearm.  Or perhaps he would even take the gun and crush it in his hands.  That’s what one usually does to build up a big, scary villain, right?

Well, author Keisuke Itagaki takes it a step further.  See, Spec bemusedly takes the gun from the delinquents, and then, remarking that such little toys can’t hurt him, proceeds to shoot himself in the face, blowing off a portion of his cheek.  One can’t help but laugh at such a creatively absurd situation.  Yet again, this humor is vital in keeping the series fresh.  Any power fantasy, no matter how well-executed (and Grappler Baki does it better than anyone, in my view), can become monotonous self-parody if not spruced up with the occasional wink-and-nod from the creator.

Moving on to actual action comedies, one can learn much from 1988’s Sakigake!! Otokojuku.  With a main character who is a blatant rip-off of Kenshiro, it takes place in the world’s toughest and most brutal high school, a Japanese all-male institution where every student is a powerful fighter, teachers make the students go through insane physical challenges, and crazy duels to the death break out constantly.

A big hit during the late 80’s, it is largely forgotten nowadays. In this case, it’s perfectly just.

It starts off promisingly enough, with fun fights and the humor being a combination of how over-the-top the school is and the ways the main character humiliates the sadistic teachers.  Unfortunately, the series loses its path halfway through, completely abandoning the comedy and turning into a melodramatic series where a powerful student dies each episode, everyone cries and mourns him, only for him to come back later.  In this, it’s badly aping Hokuto No Ken.  The latter series had (genuine) character deaths and was meant to be occasionally emotional, but these moments were few and far between, so they actually meant something.  In Otokojuku, its regularity and meaninglessness makes it eye-rolling emotional miasma.

There is also a disconnect in settings.  Characters dying in the brutal nuclear wasteland of Hokuto No Ken makes sense.  Teens dying in modern-day Japan, under the full knowledge and participation of the school principal, who is portrayed as a positive hero, makes the series idiotic and perverse.

Lastly, Hokuto No Ken never abandons its humor, even near the very end.  Otokojuku does, and it becomes borderline unbearable when combined with the weepiness.

For another stark example of what not to do, consider Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo.  Set in a futuristic world where the protagonist, sporting a golden afro, must defeat an evil emperor, it’s supposed to be a parody of other anime.  Unfortunately, “parody” here means “make a reference to, without any actual jokes or commentary”.  For me, it simply reminded me how much better those other shows were.  And unlike the other examples we looked at, Bobo is downright silly, with characters constantly yelling in an exaggerated, silly manner, chibi animations, nonsensical fights and “random” events, etc.  This could potentially work in a pure comedy, but in an action comedy, it robs the fights of any stakes or interest a viewer has in them.  This is in start contrast to Grappler Baki or Hokuto No Ken, where the combatants and fights still maintain complete credibility.  Here, the bad comedy makes the fighting worse and irrelevant, leading to a series that is torture to sit through.

Better, more original character design than most anime leads.

Which brings us back to One Punch Man.  Despite being much sillier than Hokuto No Ken, and featuring ridiculous villains and heroes, (a sexy, buxom, insect-like villainness called “Mosquite Girl” and a hero who looks like Snidely Whiplash being a waiter called “Spring Mustachio” were particular highlights) the fights are always treated seriously.  They are animated and choreographed exceedingly well, far better than in most straight action series.  Some of the humor is based on parodies of other properties, but it has actual observations to make, and is not reliant upon it.  The premise itself is funny, and frequently exploited; a random guy attains ultimate power, but it only makes his life boring as he no longer finds combat exciting.  Furthermore, he still lives a standard, humdrum life in his modest apartment, watering his plants and getting excited for weekend sales.  The fight scenes would make for a good action anime by itself, and the humor would be enough for a decent comedy.  Together, it’s an excellent series, better than the sum of its parts.

We have only touched upon a small number of action comedies in anime, both among those I like and those I don’t.  Still, we have gleaned many important lessons from the ones we examined above.

Most importantly, humor is a vital element for most action series, not just action comedies, keeping it fresh and exciting, but it should never come at the expense of the fights.  And one shouldn’t abandon the humor halfway through, a lesson many Hollywood movies could also learn from.

Action Comedies in Anime and what we can Learn from Them published first on https://medium.com/@ReloadedPCGames